


My Boy Builds Coffins (Or Rather, He Makes Them Needed)

by bottleredhead



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, Mention of previous character death, Non-graphic character death, dark!Doctor, post-The Angels Take Manhattan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-07
Updated: 2013-01-07
Packaged: 2017-11-24 01:56:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/629024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bottleredhead/pseuds/bottleredhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor goes dark. <br/>A brief exploration of his descent into madness and his caving to the darkness that was always inside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Boy Builds Coffins (Or Rather, He Makes Them Needed)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Oncoming Storm](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/15434) by Adele Lorienne. 



He’d always thought that having two hearts exempted him from evil. He wasn’t a human, whose single heart was so easily overtaken by darkness. He’d supposed that if after all these deaths he’d seen and caused, at lease one heart would remain, if not pure, then at least somewhat intact.

He’d been wrong, again. Just like he was about- no, but he couldn’t say her name, couldn’t imagine pronouncing that of her husband’s. What of it, he thought. Two more names to be added to the list of names he cannot mention, lest his dirty tongue filthy them.

Speaking of names, he’d chosen his specifically for a reason, much like he’d always done. He always needed to find reasons, ways in which to justify his deeds. He never justified anymore. Justifying always blew up in his face.

But his name was meant to heal. It was sacred, reserved for only those so pure they put others’ needs before theirs. He was selfish. He wasn’t what the name represented. He’d taken what was pure and twisted it so that people ran in fear. Whispers of his name brought demons to their knees. His darkness had permeated his very essence that he no longer knew what was right, what he ought to do as opposed to what the darkness inside hissed for him to do.

It had all started out innocently enough. He’d enjoyed hunting the ‘bad guys’ down too much, had realised it in his ninth reincarnation where his outward appearance copied his inner state of mind. His frightful lust for death had peaked through when he condemned Kahler-Jex. He felt something inside him snap when the man had condemned him. He’d wanted to scream ‘I was saving people! I ended the Time War! Civilisations brought death and destruction upon themselves, they’d forced my hand!’.

Visiting the Asylum had damaged something inside him that had remained somehow intact through all those years of pain. Seeing those broken Daleks, as old as him, had hit a mark deep inside. In a way, he was exactly like them. Damaged and broken and faulty. Had any of his kind survived, they would surely have put him in an asylum all on his own, labeling him for what he really was: insane, emotionally traumatised beyond repair.

And he hated that. He hated seeing himself reflected in his oldest enemy, knowing deep down that they were right to try to exterminate him, name him the Predator.

It seems that the Daleks were right about something else, too. Feelings weakened you. Hate was power. Hate was might. Hate was protection.

Hate was what fueled him through the sleepless nights, the dark days. It spurred him on, gave him an incentive.

It was hate that first gave him the will to live after the Time War. It seemed to any outsider who knew of his story that it was regret that caused him to save whoever he could, revenge that made him murder those who should be punished.

Regret because he couldn’t save either the Daleks or the Time Lords. Revenge for the destruction of his homeland, the slaughter of his people.

It was a trifle ridiculous that his name was the Oncoming Storm. Storms destroyed. The name only truly fit him when he caved, finally.

If asked, though he’d be more inclined to rip your throat out that answer, he’d say that those-who-shall-not-be-named’s death was his Franz Ferdinand. With the absence of his fierce ginger and Roman ex-Nesteen friends, the Doctor (if by that you mean he who cures you of life, he’d often think wryly), the man who was not a man called the Oncoming Storm had, quite simply, gone wild.

_“See, this is what happens when you travel alone for too long.”_

After he’d turned into this…this monster he was now, those were the first words to ring in his head. Covered in the blood of a barmaid from the Victorian era, a pretty little thing named Clara whose bloody hand prints painted the TARDIS doors as she scrambled to find purchase against the depressingly blue (much like his state of mind) wood, he thought back to the words the woman he loved beyond words had told him.

 _No_ , he thought viciously. _No, this is what happens when you lose everything, lose everyone, are left behind while kindness is bloodily ripped away from your bosom._

Once, a long, long time ago in a land now nonexistent, he’d heard something that went against his every belief, his very core. If you give it enough time, you morph into what you hate the most.

He’d fought against those words every day of his life. He’d refused to believe that he can become something evil, someone who’d kill. Someone who believed that the end justified the means.

It was the reason all mirrors he’d owned were covered in bloodied sheets. His reflection haunted him, pushed him further. He might not have had a steel body like the Cybermen, cases like the Daleks, a gun as as hand like Kahler-Jex, but he was not better than any of them.

Tipped over the edge of insanity, he now understood. He could see, oh so clearly, what he’d become.

He was dark and evil and twisted.

And there was no power in all the galaxies or outside them that could stop him.

He was the Oncoming Storm.

And he was headed your way.


End file.
